It seemed that something in the spirit of the irrepressible Jason Downes took possession of the house, for Emma turned almost gay, and at times betrayed signs of an ancient coquetry (almost buried beneath so many hardening years) in an actual tendency to bridle. For the first time since Jason had slipped quietly out of the back door, the sallow dining-room was enlivened by the odors, the sounds, the air of banqueting: a dinner was held that very night to celebrate the prodigal’s return. Elmer came, goaded by an overpowering curiosity, and Mabelle, separated for once from Jimmy, her round, blue eyes dilated with excitement and colored by that faintly bawdy look which so disturbed Emma. And Philip was there, of course, and Naomi, paler than usual, dressed in a badly fitting new foulard dress, which she and Mabelle had “run up at home” in the hope of pleasing Philip. The dress had been saved for an “occasion.” They had worked over it for ten days in profound secrecy, keeping it to dazzle Philip. It was thick about the waist, and did not hang properly in the back, and it made her look all lumpy in the wrong places. In case Philip did not notice it, Mabelle was to say to him, “You haven’t spoken about Naomi’s pretty new dress. She made it all herself—with her own hands.” They had carefully rehearsed the little plot born of Mabelle’s romantic brain.
But when Naomi arrived at the slate-colored house, she took Mabelle quickly into a corner and said, “Don’t speak of the dress to him.” And when Mabelle asked, “Why not?” she only answered, “You can do it later, but not to-night. I can’t explain why just now.”
She couldn’t explain to Mabelle that she was ashamed of the dress, nor why she was ashamed of it. She couldn’t say that as she stood on the stairs of the stable and saw a handsome woman, in a plain black dress, with her knees crossed, and furs thrown back over her fine shoulders, that the pride of the poor little foulard dress had turned to ashes. She couldn’t explain how she had become suddenly sick at the understanding that she must seem dowdy and ridiculous, standing there, all red and hot and disheveled, staring at them, and wanting all the time to turn and run, anywhere, on and on, without stopping. She couldn’t explain how the sight of the other woman had made the foulard dress seem poor and frowzy, even when she put on the coral beads left her by her mother, and pinned on the little gold fleur-de-lys watch her father had given her.
When she first arrived, she kept on her coat, pretending that the house was cold, but Emma said, “It’s nonsense, Naomi. The house is warm enough,” and the irrepressible Mabelle echoed, “That’s what I say, Emma. She ought to take it off and show her pretty new dress.”
Naomi had looked quickly about her, but Philip hadn’t been listening. He was standing with Uncle Elmer beside his father, who was in high spirits, talking and talking. He wouldn’t notice the dress if only she could keep people from speaking of it.
She hadn’t spoken of Lily Shane to Philip. All the way back to the flat by the railroad they had talked of nothing but his father and the poor bits of information she had been able to wring from the excited Essie; and when they arrived it was to find Mabelle waiting breathlessly to discuss it with them. She had been already to the slate-colored house and seen him with her own eyes. She didn’t stay long (she said) because she felt as if she were intruding on honeymooners. Did they know that he had lost his memory by a fall on the boat going out to China, and that it had only come back to him when he had a fall six months ago out of the mow on his ranch in Australia? Yes, it was Australia he had been to all this time....
She went on and on. “Think of it,” she said. “The excitement of welcoming home a husband you hadn’t seen in twenty-six years ... like a return from the dead. I don’t wonder your Ma is beside herself.”
Naomi heard it all, dimly, as if all Mabelle’s chatter came to her from a great distance. She should have been excited, but she couldn’t be, with something that was like a dull pain in her body. She could only keep seeing Lily Shane, who made her feel tiny and miserable and ridiculous—Lily Shane, whom Philip said he didn’t even know, and had never spoken to. Yet he knew her well enough to be making a picture of her. He never thought of making a picture of his own wife.
She felt sick, for it was the first time she had ever seen herself. She seemed to see at a great distance a pale, thin, freckled woman, with sandy hair, dressed in funny clothes.
And then she would hear Mabelle saying through a fog, “Your Ma wants you to come right up to supper. You can get Mrs. Stimson—the druggist’s wife—to sit with the twins.”